Scientists from the University of Cape Town in South Africa have used nested PCR to discover that silica-based nucleic acid extraction products from Qiagen are contaminated with sequences linked to a purportedly novel virus previously identified in seronegative hepatitis patients

In a prospective study of children admitted to two Cape Town hospitals, researchers found that Cepheid MTB/RIF testing on two samples per child detected roughly twice as many tuberculosis cases as smear microscopy on induced sputum samples.

Researchers from the University of Cape Town and the Center for Proteomic and Genomic Research plan to use Affymetrix's DMET Plus product to investigate the prevalence of specific SNPs in southern African populations and the relationship of such traits with drug efficacy.